GeForce GT 430 1GB vs Radeon HD 5550

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 5550, which features core clock speeds of 550 MHz on the GPU, and 400 MHz on the 512 MB of DDR2 RAM. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 TAUs and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GT 430 1GB should perform much faster than the Radeon HD 5550 in general. (explain)

GeForce GT 430 1GB		28800 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5550		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 16000 (125%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 430 1GB should be much (about 27%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 5550. (explain)

GeForce GT 430 1GB		11200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5550		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2400 (27%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5550 is superior to the GeForce GT 430 1GB, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 5550		4400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430 1GB		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1600 (57%)

Please note that the above 'benchmarks' are all just theoretical - the results were calculated based on the card's specifications, and real-world performance may (and probably will) vary at least a bit.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.